Page 110 of The Discount Damsel

Indecision wracked him. Bradley wanted this—freedom from his curse—ached for it, but what was the cost? Magic itself had no limits, but its wielders did. Sorcerers were still human and bound by such constraints. A spell that tired one user could kill another. What price would he pay to summon a djinn and break its bonds?

The cautionary tales told of dark sorcerers with black eyes and corrupted souls. Shunned by their peers, erased from their family trees. Bradley was already alone, and he’d vowed never to return to the Cut, so what was he truly losing? Nothing, yet he would gain everything. He would be happy again, and all would be as it should be. Just a little different. But wasn’t that the way of the world, change? It was inevitable as the weather.

No one depended on him. His parents found sufficiency in their village, and he had no real friends. And certainly no lover. And Dirk . . . he was just a baby, as he was fond of saying. He could return to his littermates at the College or travel beyond the mountains into the mists of Tianzi. Dirk didn’t deserve to be bound to a grump like Bradley. He deserved the carefree wind and refreshing rain and spinning up tornadoes and hurricanes whenever he pleased.

So, when it was all tallied, Bradley would be doing Dirk a favor. He would be protecting the little dragon from an existence where Bradley’s curse brought them both down.

Bradley wet his lips. He was strong in both body and power. His magic was born of the wilds, hardier than that which passed through bloodlines, now diluted. This parchment wouldn’t twist him or turn his eyes black like it had those of the cautionary tales. Besides, if a hapless twit like Franklin Gladstone could muster the magic to curse him, then Bradley could survive this.

He would survive, regain full use of his magic, and leave this tower. Shed all those tiresome fetters that were holding him back. The College would never accept him, and probably hunt him down as a rogue, but he’d have magic. He could make a life on the fringes of society—life on the Cut had already prepared him for that.

Sucking in a deep breath, Bradley focused on the first line of instruction that would liberate his future.

Before he could utter the first syllable, a howl tore through the tower.

It was pain, raw and terrifying, almost identical to the wail of the little luck dragon that day in the rain in the lilac garden.

The thing he had buried deep, the heart he only let Dirk see, broke its chains and roared to life.

“You wonder why your magic is so much more powerful than your peers’,” Master Excelsior had told him one afternoon after a grueling test. “It’s because you feel deeply, my dear boy. You think that makes you weak, but it doesn’t. That empathy for life is what makes you extraordinary. It connects you to this world and all the creatures within it far more intrinsically than anyone born of inherited magic. It fuels you. Don’t lose your heart, Bradley Donmarin. Not ever.”

The parchment hit the floor long after the apprentice had sprinted from the room.

CHAPTER 48

WHY LAUNDRY IS AN ABOMINABLE CHORE, UNEXPECTED KINDNESS, AND TEASING POSSIBILITIES

“I am not selfish,” Millie muttered.

Having returned to the sorcerer apprentice’s suite after her afternoon tea with Dirk, she snatched up her clothes from where they lay scattered about the bedroom. The stink of fermented sweat like sourdough starter left to rot on the counter had her sprinting for the nearest window.

She could never unsmell that.

As she sucked in a few breaths that would’ve been far more refreshing if they weren’t so blisteringly hot, she watched Dirk the Dangerous battle a Hero astride a white destrier. Despite the horse’s large size, it moved agilely across the shifting sand. The beast gave the Hero a considerable advantage, until the dragon knocked him clean out of the saddle with a bash of his tail.

“Good boy, Dirk.” She was glad he was feeling better after their impromptu tea. Her mood had soured, though, when she’d returned to the suite and found the evidence backing Bradley’s accusation strewn about the room.

Piss and plagues, how she missed servants.

Pinching her nose and squinting her eyes, for the fumes were exceptionally potent, Millie collected the rest of her offending attire and stuffed them into the tub. Their odors blossomed into their fullest and finest bouquets in the hot water, that is to say, vile enough to slap the nasty attitude right out of a rattlesnake.

Millie rushed to her reticule beside the bed, extracted the dwindling bottle of jasmine perfume, and sprayed some directly into her nostrils. Then, with a handkerchief soaked in the perfume masking the lower half of her face, she returned to do battle with her laundry. And Bradley’s, too, as she’d tossed the contents of his hamper in there to prove she was indeed a saint of generosity and thoughtfulness.

She’d found a box of detergent under the kitchen sink and gave the sludge in the tub a thorough sprinkling (she emptied half the box). Now what? Millie assumed it was like washing her hands for supper after her latest adventure in the forest—agitation and scrubbing were needed to lather the soap and get the filth off her skin.

She pushed out her lower lip as she thought about how best to accomplish that feat, fingers drumming on her hips. There was always the washboard she’d seen when she’d first met Bradley on the balcony all those weeks ago, but she didn’t know where it was and she refused to seek him out. She didn’t need that condescending apprentice’s help for anything.

It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know how to do her laundry or remember to pick up after herself or clear her dishes every time. Servants had always accomplished those tasks for her, and such things seemed trivial when compared to her training to become a pirate. Trivial, but not unnecessary, she had come to learn from Bradley’s tirade. But she hadn’t realized any of that until he’d brought it to her attention, however unreasonably harshly, in her opinion.

The wash water had muddied to a gray purple, reminding her of the time she’d watched the peasant women squishing grapes with their bare feet at a wine festival. With their hems tucked into their belts, the women revealed long strong legs as they stomped the Wine Press Dance in circles around the wooden tub. Nearby, a bard played his lute and sang an accompanying folk song. Millie remembered the smiles and giggles of the grown women acting like frolicsome youths as they stomped the grapes into juice.

Inspired, she hiked her own skirts up into her belt, stepped into the tub, and got to stomping. The clothes swirled and the detergent foamed, and Millie’s sense of accomplishment grew as the waters turned darker and darker. She didn’t remember the bard’s folk song, but she sang what she remembered of Madame Palferoi’s “Bouncing Breasts of the Busty Barmaid.”

“So lift your mugs, let the ale flow free,

Salute the lass who brings such glee!

For who can brawl or stay downcast,